moray james

make sure the cabinets are are airtight. replace all the gaskets, don't forget the one on the terminal cup and the two on the mid horn (at the throat to driver interface) yours will be hard by now Bob Crites will sell you a fresh set. The weight on the passive can be up to 2.5 ounces (not more) use large flat steel washers to build up the desired weight and bond them together with four very small (to minimize extra weight) dabs of five minute epoxy and mount the whole weight with three or four small dabs of the same epoxy. This will hold them securely in place and it will make them easy to remove should you ever want to do so at a later date to return them to stock tuning. Dynamat or hushmat on the woofer and passive baskets is a good idea as it reduces ringing. a layer of constrained layer damping on the mid and tweeter pole pieces topped by a layer of F-11 Acoustical felt will transform your horn drivers. make sure not to felt felt in the voice coil gap and don't let the felt touch the diaphragm. Three small dabs of craft glue like Aleene's tacky glue will hold the felt in place, in this application the right adhesive in a minimal quantity is best. I like to twist my lead wire pairs to minimize pick up of stray fields. Below are some photos of my brace work in a Quartet which is the same as a Forte only three inches shorter. They should give yo a good idea graces are on edge and are 3/4"x2" this yields maximum stiffness with minimum material. Stringers can be fir 1x2 which is really 3/4"x1.5" but if yo like you can use all ply material. You can damp all you want above the woofer and some on the bottom of the cabinet but keep the area between the woofer and the passive free of damping that area must be free to fully resonate so the two can effectively couple. After you finish your Forte keep your eyes open for a set of Chorus ll and do the same to them. If you want to get into flea size SET or SEP amps then find a set of Cornwall 2 and work on them they are designed for lower power amps where the chorus with its pro woofer are built for power. Hope this helps. You could also take a good hard look at the Bob Ctites Cornscala "D".

can you post a clear sharp photo of the throats of these horns? Thanks.

So, staging/imaging is being able to easily tell the placement of instruments? Is this a general rule for smaller speakers in the same series with the same construction? Let say the smaller speaker will have a sharper focus with respect to stage and image. Smaller woofers will act more like a point source. Short of seeing your set up I cannot respond to your last comment. When image is twitchy that is generally due to VERY directional loudspeakers and not wide dispersion speakers.

for moderate level no not much difference but the smaller loudspeaker will have a distinct advantage in that it will stage and image better than the larger model will.

you can purchase Klipsch Factory titanium mid diaphragms only from Simply Speakers they fit the mid in a H2 H3 Forte/Forte ll Chorus/Chorus ll KLF20/30 along with a number of other models.

nt

titanium is popular for one reason and that is it does not work harden like aluminum. If you slap an aluminum comp driver diaphragm onto the phase plug it will either crack and shatter right away or depending upon how hard you slap it it will crack and shatter later but crack and shatter it will. Aluminum is a better sounding material than titanium and it has a structural resonance quite a bit higher than titanium does (almost 50% higher). The stiffer the diaphragm material the better because you push the first structural resonance up into the higher registrar of the pass band of the driver.

what ever you use it needs to match in both color and sheen

nice rich patina on that Cherry somebody needs to jump on these very fine sounding loudspeakers. That's a grate price on a great speaker.

if I want a good stable low voltage switching supply capable of at least a couple of amps to run a transport it is going to cost me $100.00 CND. minimum. Do you really think you can buy a 30 - 40 dollar dac and it is going to sound as good as a well designed and built one costing 10 - 300 times more? Perhaps someone who does not have a hi rez system might not notice much or any differences but with a good rig a 40 dollar dac is not going to get the job done. A 30 - 40 dollar Sony DVD player has a pretty good built in dac but it is not at sota level and Sony make and sell a lot of those so cost is way down. For a phone or low level background music sure inexpensive dacs are fine but they are not going to convince anybody they are at the symphony.

many black felt pens are actually very dark purple and this will show up when looking at it from an angle. Even different sheen black touch-up can stand out as obvious. Test out any touch--up product on the bottom of your cabinet first.

Bob does not offer a ti mid diaphragm but his phenolic mid diaphragm is to me better sounding than the factory phenolic unit. Klipsch do have the only ti mid diaphragm which is available from and only from Simply speakers this is the Factory part. IMO this takes these speakers to a whole new level not possible with phenolic units. I have installed a good number of the ti mid diaphragms and I see no need to modify the network but some will argue it needs to be modified. I suggest you drop in the ti mid diaphragm play the heck out of it for 2 -3 months and evaluate them you can always include the network mod if you think you need to after the fact. I think that the mids makes the largest single improvement that you can make. I would recommend you get a cap kit from Bob or his full network as the parts are of high quality and they are exactly the correct voltage and physical size you need to fit your boards all from one vendor and one shipping charge Bob is the very best person you could be dealing with they simply do not get any better. By the time you shop around and pay multiple shipping charges there is no savings to be had and you may end up paying more. You should also buy at the same time from Bob a new set of rubber ring mid horn/driver gaskets. You should also install all new gaskets on the horns woofers passives and network cups. You should also mark and rotate your woofers and passives 180 degrees to counter sag due to gravity. Bobs networks are the same schematic as the stock units but he has more spacing and better component orientation as such they will and do sound better than the stock networks. You can sell the stock networks to help offset cost. Most people have very little experience soldering capacitors let Bob do the job get it done right and tested as it is very easy for a little experienced solder to mess up a cap. I would recommend you stay with a 16 gage wire for the networks You can re install fresh spades and crimp and solder them I like to twist all my hook up wire sets to minimize noise pick up. 16 gage will sound better than 14 gage and they are so short the difference in resistance is not much of an issue. I hope that this is of assistance. As always YMMV.

Rather than buying a horn off line for a driver you don't know anything about it might prove more fruitful for you to find what horns have been successfully mated with a K69 driver in two way systems. Matching a horn and a driver is not an easy task so why not make you choice from the informed opinion of those who have researched and experimented? A K510 would be a good starting point and a K402 would be a solid choice and network info is available here but there are other horns.

without actually taking a look at the schematics of both amplifiers it is impossible to say which amp will do a better job but I would be happy to have as many watts more head room as I could get provided it actually sounds better. That in a nutshell is what the OP needs to do listen to both amplifiers and make the decision which one he likes more. Make sure you take the time to do a reality check once or twice or more over a period of weeks repeat the experiment to double check you still like what you like and for the same reasons. Comparing components is a great way to learn and to develop your critical listening skills.

a very Happy Christmas to you all.